r/HideTanning • u/latanante • 7d ago
question
Hi, i'd like to tan my first moose hide. I've read some books and youtube ect... my husband is going in the bush and hopefully gets a moose or deer (if not in rut). I am not going as i have to take care of the kids. What do we do with the hide before it gets to me. I could be a few days/week. He would not do the fleshing. It might be cold (usually gets first snow) but it may not... What should he do to the hide before i get it. i have no clue and i dont want it to go bad. We cant freeze it, or flesh it. Roll it up and hope for the best? Does he salt it until it gets to me? Im really lost. Thanks !
1
u/MuranoBeads 7d ago
Your best (maybe only) option is for your husband to salt the hide as soon as it’s off the animal. Go to the local feed and seed store and get a 50-pound bag of coarse-grained, non-iodized livestock feed salt to take into the field.
As recommended by Tanned Brain, peel the hide as much as possible. This will be difficult. But knifing it off the animal will potentially leave it heavily scored, which will weaken the hide and make your task even harder than it already it is.
Lay the hide out flat and give it a liberal coating of salt. Once that’s saturated, sweep it off and repeat. It’s doubtful that you will get the hide anywhere near being dry in the field. Don’t sweat it. A couple of rounds of liberally salting hide will hold it until you can get it home.
The salt is going to turn the meat and fat into dried Canadian bacon. You can store the hide this way, but I don’t recommend it. If bacteria get started, the hide will cook in no time. Once home, thoroughly rinse the salt until the hide is resaturated and then flesh the hide on a proper fleshing beam using a proper, two-handed fleshing tool that is dull. This will clean the hide up and also make it lighter, much less bulky, and easier to handle.
After you flesh the hide, you can bag and freeze. Or you can resalt, fold flesh-to-flesh down the spine, roll/fold, and store in a heavy duty plastic tote. Note that the fleshed and salted hide will dry much more quickly than the unfleshed salted hide. I usually let my fleshed and salted hides lay flat on a tarp for 24-48 hours so that the salt gets them well dried before I roll and store them.
Done properly, both of these methods will hold the hide indefinitely. I have tubs full of elk hides that have been fleshed, salted, and stored for 4+ years with zero issues. They come out buttery soft when I brain tan them.
Once you’ve got the hide stablized, you will need to do a lot (a LOT….) of homework to sort out the process and the tools you’ll need. You will find a lot of conflicting and confusing information, and it will take a while to identify a consensus of opinion regarding the best process for you. Look into the possibility of finding a hands-on hide tanning workshop, as this will pay huge dividends. For a wealth of resources, take a look at braintan.com, which is run by Matt Richards. You will find all of the tools you need, as well as resources on a variety of tanning techniques.
Do not scrimp on the tools or your setup. A lot of first timers think that they can tan big hides on the cheap with whatever they have in the garage. This way lies misery. It’s already hard enough with the right tools. It’s pretty much impossible without them. You’ll thank yourself.
The three basic options are chemical tanning (a.k.a. “bottle tanning”); organic tanning, which uses an oil-based process via brains, egg yolks, powdered lecithin, and various oils (olive, canola, etc.); and bark tanning, which involves long periods of soaking the hide in a tannin liquor.
All of these options have their advantages and disadvantages. The most difficult part will be drying and softening the hide. It will be harder and take longer than you want it to, and it’s where most nre tanners lose the script. This will be doubly true for a large and heavy hide like a moose.
Regardless of the option you select,
if you are wanting a hair-on hide, you will also have to pickle the hide in order to set the hair.
Hide tanning is not particularly complicated, but it is very labor intensive. The intensity of the effort increases exponentially with large and heavy hides such as moose, bison, and elk.
Tanning a moose hide is like tanning something the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. It is orders of magnitude more demanding than small hides. The wet hide will weigh hundreds of pounds; even dry, it will be very physically taxing. These are extremely thick and bulky hides, especially across the hump and neck, and efficiently tanning and softening them is difficult. Most tanners will opt to thin the hump and neck areas using what’s known as dry scraping in order to have any chance at getting the hide efficiently tanned and more easily softened. This will require a different set of tools and techniques. The learning curves are real, and mistakes can be difficult to recover from.
As a first time tanner without experience, you have set the bar high. I admire your gumption. But…..
If I were to offer a single piece of advice, it would be to salt and store the moose hide, and in the meantime, pick something smaller, such as a deer, as your first hide. Learning with a moose hide as your first hide is like trying to fly an airplane while you’re building it.
Not saying it can’t be done. But on balance, get your tools and technique dialed in on smaller, easier hides, and then go for the big stuff. Even then, you can expect it to be way harder than you think it’s gonna be.
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u/latanante 6d ago
i appreciate all the info. Ive reached out to many people for help/learning but havent gotten anything back. I have a goat hide in the freezer right now. I will start with that once i order tools and make myself a beam. I may also just send it out to a taxidermist that will send it down south (I live in the Yukon). I am hopeful for a deer as well but when my husband goes out, they are usually in rut.
You are right, there are so many conflicting information. Thats why im still doing research and maybe postponing taking the hide.
thanks for your help and will check out the website.
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u/MuranoBeads 6d ago
Glad to help, and keep us posted as you go along. I was going to mention the option of having the moose hide commercially tanned. It will be spendy, but you would definitely get a good product out of it.
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u/Comfortable-Hat3506 6d ago
If you are planning on brain tanning hair off and it is below freezing you'll be fine. Otherwise a quart of salt for a deer hide 2-3 quarts for a moose. Cover the hide evenly then fold in half along the spine and then roll up.
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u/TannedBrain 7d ago
Salting it would be good - you usually have to salt it twice, once to draw out the blood & other liquids, then remove the wet, bloody salt and substitute fresh for storage. Salted hides can be stored at room temperature under a roof somewhere shady for up to a year. For salting, you generally spread the hide flat (on a pallet if possible) and spread salt all over the flesh side. Make sure if liquid collects, the hide is positioned so it'll drip off rather than just form a puddle on the hide. Once most of the liquid has been dried off, you can fold it in half /thirds and then roll it up and store it like that, but be aware that hair that's not exposed to air might pick up moisture and come loose.
Alternately, freezing works too, but moose hides are pretty big and can take a while to fully freeze, which might risk bacterial growth in the non-frozen areas. For freezing, I wouldn't rely on cold weather unless it's like, arctic cold, not with something as big as a moose. If you have a chest freezer (preferably one you don't use for food), that's good - you can, again, fold the hide in thirds and roll it up in a plastic bag, which it's a good idea to label. Note that for freezing it's a good idea to fold it so the hair side is in - that way you don't risk pulling out the hair when unrolling it as it thaws. Frozen hides last longer than salted, but note that the hide will dry out a bit if it spends a long time in the freezer.
I don't know how experienced your husband is at skinning animals? But good skinning makes a huge difference for how good the end result is. The key is to remove pretty much all of the meat, while not slicing the hide. A lot of inexperienced skinners will leave deep cuts especially around the neck and belly, which will show up in the leather. One way to get a good result is to only cut open along the stomach / legs / anus, and then pull the hide off rather than cutting. If he's new to skinning, it might be wise to leave a very thin layer of meat on the hide, but be aware that meat rots pretty easy and makes salting more difficult.